Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  The Reverend Kirk could feel their eyes turning toward the interloper. He opened his mouth, but the words he heard were Ivanhoe Grant’s.

  “Before we talk to Jee-sus, we got to talk to each other. Jee-sus doesn’t want to hear us whine and wail and bawl like little babies in the crib. Jee-sus wants us to settle our business. Jee-sus wants us to help ourselves!”

  The responses were tentative, muted. “Amen.”

  “That’s the word.”

  “Help ourselves, Lord Jesus.”

  The Reverend Kirk said, “What right have you to come in here—?”

  Grant turned on him with fury. “I am a preacher of the Lord! I have been called to preach to my people in their hour of trial!”

  “Tell the word.”

  “Preaching in the hour of trial.”

  The Reverend Kirk felt the soul of his congregation escaping him. He could not hold them. He stood in the pulpit, nonplussed. Ivanhoe Grant was glowing. He stalked the chancel, and his whole body shone with a nimbus of light. Even Kirk could not take his eyes off him. All he could think was that it must be some sort of evil trick.

  “I’m talking about earthly business, friends. The work of this world.”

  “Tell about the work!”

  “We all working for the Lord!”

  Grant clasped his hands, bowed his head, and whispered so that they had to strain in absolute stillness to hear. “There is no more work.”

  Then he said it louder: “There is no more work.”

  Then he thundered it into their faces: “There is no more work!” They shrank back. “The man has taken away your work.”

  “The man!”

  “Pity the workingman!”

  The Reverend Kirk said, “Now hold on, don’t go stirring up—”

  “Ah, yes!” Grant turned on him again, hissing. “Lower your eyes, boy. Yassuh, boss. No suh, cap’n. I don’t be needin’ no work, boss!”

  “They’re not firing anybody,” Kirk said. “Listen to me.”

  Ivanhoe Grant let loose a caterwauling laugh. “Of course they aren’t firing anybody—not yet! You think the man can run his own mills? You think he can lay a straight course of bricks? You think he can stand up under twelve hours on the wharf that would kill a plow mule? They’ve got to keep some of us, or the city will fall apart. It’s a simple matter of good business.”

  “Say the word, preacher.”

  “Keep this city keeping on.”

  Grant seemed to grow in stature as he talked. Kirk watched the man’s back—it was as if he were inflating.

  “Now, the businessmen of this community—the white businessmen of this city—made a proclamation today: no Negroes need apply. All new jobs will go to whites. The strategy is to replace us one by one. Man by man. Black man dies, white man take his place.”

  “Amen.”

  “Black man quits, white man take his place.”

  “Amen.”

  “Black man injured on the job, white man take his place.”

  “Black man fired—”

  “White man take his place!”

  “White man!”

  “We losing that job!”

  Ivanhoe Grant turned to stone and let them mutter, signify, testify, even shout, for a long minute. Then he held up one finger and the place quieted instantly. The gaslamps hissed.

  The Reverend Kirk burned with envy and humiliation.

  “Plenty of black men working,” Grant whispered. “Plenty of black men got good jobs. Earn a pay envelope. Raise a family. Pay for the groceries. Pay for the streetcar. Pay for the gas company. Buy a dress for the wife, shoes for the little children. Plenty of black men working.”

  “Working, that’s the truth.”

  “Plenty of good providers. Taxpayers. God-fearing men with quick minds and noble hearts and strong backs and nimble hands.” His whisper had a soothing quality, like honey and whiskey on a sore throat.

  He walked away from them, far back into the shadows until he all but disappeared. Some thought he had left. Kirk couldn’t see him. Men in the back row stood up. The gaslamps whispered along the walls.

  Suddenly, out of the shadows, the voice exploded at them: “But they dare not vote!” A woman in the front pew toppled into the arms of her neighbors. Grant strode forward, arriving in their midst with miraculous speed. His great voice filled the church like an organ. “Any black man who votes! Any black man who exercises his rights as a citizen and votes!” He flew out of the chancel, swung into a pew, and leaped up onto the seat, suddenly ten feet tall. An old, bent woman scrambled out of his way. “That man will be cast out! That man will be fired!”

  “Word, preacher, word!”

  “Can’t vote in our own homeplace!”

  While they shouted their anger, Ivanhoe Grant climbed down from the bench, threw off his coat, and approached the pulpit. The Reverend Kirk stared at him, trembling. I will not surrender my pulpit, Kirk thought, but he was already stepping down the three short steps, mesmerized.

  He leaped into the pulpit—Ivanhoe Grant in his boiled white shirtsleeves, his arms raised in a stiff V, but his hands bent and loose at the ends of his cuffs, so that now he seemed to have wings. He appeared as an avenging angel poised over the congregation.

  They quieted. Their eyes stared like birds’ eyes, glassy and expectant. He said softly, “Let me tell you a story.”

  “Amen,” they said. “Tell the story, brother.”

  “A stranger comes to town.”

  “Tell about the stranger.”

  “This was years ago. Before the War of Emancipation. Before Father Abraham. Before Reconstruction. Before this place was anyplace.”

  “In olden times,” the bent crone in the front row said, “when prophets walked the land.”

  “Amen, sister.”

  He paused, watched their eyes, nodded. “A stranger comes to town. He is not alone. Six brothers, traveling together.”

  They knew this story. They whispered this story to their children when they misbehaved. They told it as a ghost story on windy nights camping by the river, as owls streaked through the swampy darkness and old, slimy bottom dwellers splashed out of the water to steal a hooded glance at the moon.

  “They were no criminals,” he said. “They were good men.”

  “Good men.”

  “Good men and godly.”

  “Godly men.”

  “Men who had cast off the yoke of slavery. Freedmen under the law.”

  “Free by law.”

  “Family men, looking for a job of work.”

  “Looking for a job.”

  “They were hauled to the marketplace like common criminals.” His voice quavered. “The way Jesus was hauled before Pilate. And the Pharisees of this city judged them not by the laws of God but by the laws of hatred and fear.”

  “Pharisees, umh, umh!”

  Ivanhoe Grant stood rigid, head bowed, eyes downcast, his voice silken, seamless. “And what was the sentence for being a black man in this town on that night?” He swept his eyes over them and breathed a single word: “Death.”

  Nobody spoke. He closed his eyes in a rapture of pain.

  “The Pharisees put them to death. One by one. On the banks of the brown river that flows through this city and empties its sorrow into the sea. The river of fear.”

  He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on all of them at once. Every man and woman was sure Ivanhoe Grant was staring into his or her private soul, the place where their sins stood clustered like canned goods on a shelf, labeled by weight and size and brand. They held their breath. Nobody said anything—they knew when to listen for the breath of the Holy Ghost. They wanted to hear it. If they held their breath long enough, straining their ears, there it was: in the fluttering of their own hearts.

  Ivanhoe Grant said, “They cut off their heads.” It was difficult to go on. He could feel the hot blade on his own neck. “They mounted the heads along the roads, as they mounted Jesus on the cross on the hill above Jerusa
lem.”

  “Amen,” they said quietly.

  He was clearly suffering. “On the hill of Calvary.”

  “Calvary, Lord, Lord.”

  “To warn against troublemakers. To keep the people down. But the people cannot be kept down. The people will rise!”

  “Amen!”

  “The people will rise on the wings of the Holy Ghost!”

  “Amen!” they said more vigorously.

  “Six strangers came to town. Their names are lost to history. The thieves crucified beside Jesus had names, but these black strangers had no names.”

  “No names.”

  That was part of the story they all knew, the part that made it folklore and not real truth.

  “Except one.” He held up a shining finger, straight as a blade. The silence was absolute. He waited for it to become intolerable. “Daniel John Grant,” he whispered finally. “My father’s father. My own blood kin.”

  The effect was electric. Alex Manly, standing in the back beside the door, could feel the energy crackle along the pews, leap the empty spaces, arcing distance. It crackled along his sleeves like static. It made the congregation buzz and murmur. So the story was true—not just a jack tale of haints and bogeymen and night spirits. If one of the men had a name, then the story was true. Now, all at once—now that it had really happened—it gained power. It loomed larger in their imaginations. It took on new meaning.

  In one stroke, Ivanhoe Grant had altered entire childhoods, changed the story they lived by.

  Alex Manly was amazed. The knowledge of what he had just heard struck his stomach like a bullet. His old fear returned. Something was possible that had not been possible a moment ago. He had been wrong about the threatening words—they were not empty. They were the voice of the bogeyman, and he was waiting for an answer.

  Ivanhoe Grant lifted his long, beautiful arms and declared, “Every man and woman among you—every man and woman among you—must stand up and be counted. You cannot turn away from the earthly business of the Lord!”

  The place erupted into a chaos of argument and shouting. In the melee, Ivanhoe Grant melted away. The Reverend Kirk mounted the pulpit with the trudging step of a hod carrier and pleaded, “Let us pray.” But his voice was lost in the riot of other voices. He stood forlorn, staring out over his congregation, completely beyond him now, anger hard as a pill in his throat. He felt tricked. His sin was the sin of pride. He had deluded himself.

  This, tonight, was not the trembling fervor of the Holy Ghost. This was the Other.

  Alex Manly was so transfixed that the two Negro Pinkerton men had to shoulder him aside to get out the door. He didn’t even notice them. And they were in such a hurry to report to J. Allan Taylor, they didn’t recognize him.

  Sam smelled like the tavern—Gray Ellen noticed it right away. It was in his clothes, in his hair—cigar smoke, stale beer, men. When he kissed her lightly on the cheek, though, there was no stink of whiskey. Thank God, she thought. But how many times could he say no? If he traveled with that Calabash creature very much longer, lingering in taverns and waterfront bars and gentlemen’s clubs, sooner or later he was going to give in.

  One moment of weakness, that was all it took. How could a woman live twenty-four hours of every day in fear of a single moment that would happen out of her sight, out of her control, a moment that could ruin her life in a swallow? How could she rely on character when, time after time, she had watched character bend so easily?

  Sam changed out of his linen suit, which was already looking frayed and overworn, then washed up using a pitcher and bowl. She watched him from behind, how his back flexed each time he lifted his arms to his face. Maybe each time he said no, he grew stronger—was that possible? She didn’t really believe it, but she had no choice. Maybe with men character was just habit.

  She sat on the edge of the bed watching him. She was all mixed up. She wanted him to touch her without touching her. She wanted to hold him and stroke his hair and neck, bury her face in his strong shoulders and chest and feel his arms wrapping her in safe love.

  She wanted him to understand what she was feeling, when she wasn’t sure herself. She wanted him to know exactly what he ought to do, though she had no idea what that was.

  He stripped his shirt off. She watched his back and thought, without meaning to, of Ivanhoe Grant. Where was he tonight? Whom was he with? A man like that—even a preacher man—surely he was with somebody. Especially a preacher man. Give me succor in my hour of trial. What a pitch. It had worked beautifully—made her just indignant enough to call him nigger. He’d worked all afternoon to make her say that one word, and she had. She couldn’t believe she’d said it—it was a word she never used. Yet she had said it out loud. At the moment she said it, she believed it. It was the truth. It still amazed her. Made her want to knock his teeth out. The arrogance.

  Sam stepped out of his trousers and folded them carelessly over a chair back. His white calves were too skinny, but his thighs and buttocks were muscled. The nightshirt fluttered down, covering them. If only he wouldn’t turn, she could enjoy watching him. Without his wanting anything from her, without his desire.

  But he did turn. All at once, she felt flustered, unsure what to do, as she felt every night now when he came to bed. In her nightdress, she felt naked, almost chilly. Gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. She felt herself coil reflexively, gathering herself inside herself, out of reach. She didn’t want to, she just did. She thought of poor, fat Calliope, pining for her white-trash man—what she wouldn’t give for a man like Sam. But that didn’t help. Knowing didn’t help. Feeling was all that mattered.

  He stepped over to the bed and took her hand. She stood up as awkwardly as if this were their wedding night. Sam drew her in and hugged her. She told herself not to stiffen, but she did. If he would only wait until she could touch him.

  “Look, it’s all right,” he said. “I’m tired, too.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  He sighed—so it was going to be like this. “Harry wanted to talk. I couldn’t get away.”

  “Harry always wants to talk. Doesn’t he have a wife?”

  Sam loosened his arms around her and stepped back. “He’s just an old drunk, he doesn’t have anybody.” He walked around to the other side of the bed and poured himself half a glass of water from the pitcher on the night table. She watched him drink it in one long gulp, wishing she could start this whole conversation over.

  “It’s this place,” she said softly. “I thought the school would be enough.”

  “Nothing’s ever enough, is it?”

  She touched other people. She and Calliope patted each other’s arms as they talked, without even noticing. She hugged the children at school, she told him so. She just could not bear to touch him.

  “Sometimes,” she said. She turned off the lamp and got into bed next to him, not touching.

  He could still see her as a dim outline. “I don’t know what you want.”

  The sadness in his tone disarmed her. “It’s not what I want. It’s figuring out how to get it. That’s the hard part.”

  “I’m trying,” he said. “I’m really trying my hardest.”

  “I know, I know.” She shifted on the mattress, moving closer.

  There was more to it—he wanted a child now. Suddenly, life seemed desperately short. It seemed vitally important that somebody carry on his name, his blood. Kenan talked about nothing but his son. All the other men had families to carry their lives into the future.

  He lay there staring at the ceiling. He listened to her shallow breathing, felt her warm weight on the mattress, pulling him toward the center of the bed. He shifted a leg so he wouldn’t accidentally brush her. In his mind’s eye, he pictured Gabrielle, basket on her arm, tending her garden. He imagined her sad brown eyes, the fullness of her breasts, the bead of perspiration on her upper lip. How he had wanted to kiss her.

  After a few minutes, Gray Ellen said, “Are you asleep?”

  “
Course not.”

  “Hold me,” she said, and snuggled in under his arm, laying her head on his chest. Her hair smelled wonderful, like honeysuckle.

  He stroked her black hair, falling loose on her shoulders. His whole body felt electrified.

  “I do love you,” she said.

  He relaxed. Maybe this was going to be all right, whatever happened. Like the old days. If they could just make love once, then he wouldn’t think about it so hard every time she got close. Maybe he should confide in her how much he, too, now wanted a child. Maybe that would make a difference.

  “I just want everything to be perfect,” he said.

  She wriggled free of his arm and leaned over him, looking him in the eye. “It’s not perfection that makes a woman fall in love. It’s the flaws—that’s what wins her heart.”

  “So a woman falls in love with what’s wrong with a man.”

  “You twist it all up when you say it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  She lay her head back on his chest and kissed it through his nightshirt. “Oh, there’s plenty wrong with me, all right.”

  No, he thought, only one thing—you can’t forget that I left you alone that night. “Nothing we can’t fix,” he said.

  “Start fixing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” She put her hands under his nightshirt, stroking his thighs and stomach. They kissed, at first brushing lips, tentatively, then holding the kiss. Gently, he touched her breast, kissed the nipple. She touched him, and he moaned in pleasure.

  His sound stopped her. In the quiet dark, she could have gone through with it.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Shh,” she said. “Don’t talk.”

  “Tell me,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  The more he talked, the worse it was. “Don’t talk.”

  He pushed her head back onto the pillow and moved over her. Suddenly, she felt claustrophobic, pinned. She couldn’t move her arms. Too fast, she thought, too fast—slow down—but it was no use. Now, the darkness did not soothe her but made her feel even more closed in. She couldn’t quite get her breath. What she needed was for something to come out of her, not for something more to go inside her.